Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they’ve learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
“The biggest thing was fear and uncertainty,” Dr. Justin Hall told CBC Toronto. Hall is chief of emergency medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where Canada’s first case of COVID-19 was identified on Jan. 25, 2020.
“Our staff responded extremely well to not knowing what was going to happen and every day looked a little bit different,” he said.
March 11 marked the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic. In the days that followed that announcement, the provincial government declared a state of emergency, with the City of Toronto following suit soon after.
While most will remember those unprecedented times for lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine rollouts, Hall said there were many other useful lessons learned about minimizing the spread of disease.
“We were able to have a lot of innovation during this time,” he said. “That’s one thing that I hope will continue to last and that we won’t forget because of the pandemic.”
One example of that innovation is the virtual emergency department, which Hall says is still operating and was created through a partnership between Sunnybrook, University Hospital Network and Toronto Unity Health.
According to Sunnybrook’s website, the virtual emergency department offers same-day online appointments with emergency department physicians, minimizing the need for people to come to the hospital in person. While its initial purpose was to help address the pandemic, the service also aims to help under-served populations and reduce emergency room wait times.
Communication key, health experts say
Dr. Na-Koshie Lamptey, Toronto’s acting medical officer of health, told CBC Toronto the city is more prepared to handle an infectious disease crisis now than it was before COVID-19.
“Communication was so key to an effective response,” she said. “The coordination and networks that were built up … the way the hospitals, public health, primary care and social services settings really were all sharing information in new ways. I think that is going to help us coordinate better if there should be another challenge.”
That “Team Toronto” coordination has already proven useful to help tackle issues of income, food security and transportation, Lamptey said.
She says she’s hopeful that those networks are maintained to help better position the city and Toronto Public Health in the event of a potential new pandemic.
“We really felt at the time that we were building the ship as we sailed it,” Dr. Samira Mubareka told CBC Toronto of the early days of the pandemic.
Mubareka, an infectious disease specialist and medical microbiologist at Sunnybrook, says now there are “fortunately” less restrictions on those who can study and work with “high consequence coronaviruses.”
“When SARS-coronavirus-2 landed here in Canada, you could count on one hand the number of individuals who were familiar with coronaviruses,” she said.
This level of preparedness needs to be maintained, especially with regard to vaccine distribution, she said
“Understanding the biology is key for vaccine development,” Mubareka said. “But unless you have the right pieces for coordinating and implementing and rolling out vaccines, which includes everything from logistics to communication, social sciences, public health, all of those things, they all have to work together in a coordinated fashion.”
Any reflections on the first five years of the pandemic need to include looking at the wide-ranging impacts of COVID-19, Lamptey said.
Toronto’s former medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, was a key figure during the city’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, declared five years ago on March 11. She spoke to CBC’s Here and Now about the city’s response to the virus and reflected on some of the biggest challenges.
“It really is a chance to reflect on the lives that were lost, to honour the workers who contributed to the response, to protect the public,” she said.
“Remember that there are still people who are having effects from COVID,” she said, including those who are still at risk of severe outcomes from being infected and those experiencing the effects of long COVID.
